Madam, - Until February 20th an exhibition entitled "The Classical Feminine" can be seen at the Queen's University of Belfast. With originality, elegance and a sense of style, Greek and Roman influences upon the dress of women from the 18th century onwards are illustrated and explained.
The beautiful displays from Ireland, Britain and beyond, bear witness to ties between Graeco-Roman refinement and our own notions of polite society.
The curator of the exhibition is Dr M.J. Alden, an enduringly devoted scholar of Greek language, literature and antiquities at the university.
For years, crassly utilitarian senators, policy-makers and other functionaries at Queen's have been striving to eliminate Greek philology and archaeology, and Roman also, from the university. The exhibition shows how foolish the eagerness for suppression has been. It is still not too late to hope that, with the impending arrival of a new Vice-Chancellor, philistine prejudices will no longer persist at Q.U.B.
"The Classic Feminine" should not mark the end of a fine tradition as old as the university itself; may it become, instead, a reminder that if literae humaniores are ruined, a better part of our civility is also wrecked.
Belfast deserves wiser counsels. - Yours, etc.,
G.L. HUXLEY, MRIA, c/o Buswell's Hotel, Molesworth Street, Dublin 2.